


milk and honey

by Verbyna



Series: kent parson poems [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Poetry, Queer Themes, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 22:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15828144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: to be so blessed it’s almost a sin& lose everything but the blessing





	milk and honey

**Author's Note:**

> written a while back for the enjoyment of the #hellsquad.

i.

jesus, if you want my heart,  
reach in and take it. take me if you want me,  
if i’m worth taking.  
now or  
never. never again.  
please come now, before the alarm rings  
& i go back to pretending  
i don’t need your hand.

ii.

milk and honey, god.  
milk in coffee and honey in tea  
and maple syrup in everything.  
i hope heaven sweeps me off my feet  
like getting drunk on honeyed bourbon,  
& i hope the air turns so cool  
it’s like milk on a burning tongue  
and i forget the desert.  
forget what i said about it,  
forget it was home, because it isn’t.  
i’ll only say it once:  
home is a river i can drown in  
unless it carries me along.  
milk and honey, amen.

iii.

mother, teach me mercy.  
teach me to forgive the tresspass  
of feelings forced upon me,  
of being the means but not the end,  
teach me what it means to be  
the road taken once and left  
to grow unattended.  
to be so blessed it’s almost a sin  
& lose everything but the blessing.  
there must be a road.  
there must be a way and mercy to pave it.  
good intentions lead somewhere  
but no intentions, no intent -  
that’s how a man wanders for forty days  
in a desert, looking for heaven.

iv. 

if this water could turn to wine, jesus.  
i’d be okay. i would.  
okay is relative but a miracle is not,  
a miracle is getting through tonight sober  
or else the water in my glass  
turning into wine to save me from choosing.  
i need a miracle so big it puts me to sleep.  
a miracle no one sees but me.  
a reprieve  
until i learn to live with it.

v.

god willing, there will be a lesson.  
i was made teachable and impatient  
& sometimes i doubt there is a point  
worth making. a stopping point  
worth reaching.  
if i had mercy i could extend it to myself,  
reach through the past to the last safe place  
& take myself out of the story  
long enough to tell myself the ending  
and fall back into it knowing  
something worth knowing:  
the blessing is the point.  
that there was a blessing.  
and then i’ll watch myself swallow it  
like a preview of heaven,  
milk on a burning tongue  
that doesn’t need to shape a name.  
miracle of miracles:  
to survive being chosen.


End file.
